


Fortune's Flower Shop

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Fluff, Komaeda is trying his best!!!, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 12:19:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19334398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: A pointy-haired customer has an interesting request, and Nagito Komaeda has to think fast.This was written for the Komahina Secret Exchange on tumblr, as a gift for tumblr user namsuuuuuuu/Ao3 user hot!!!  It’s for their prompt “komaeda owns a flower shop and hinata comes storming in one day, slaps 20 bucks on the counter and says “how do I passive-aggressively say fuck you in flower?"”





	Fortune's Flower Shop

**Author's Note:**

  * For [namsuuuuuuu](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=namsuuuuuuu), [hot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hot/gifts).



> Hi there~~~ This is my second gift for tumblr user namsuuuuuuu, during the course of this summer's Komahina Secret Exchange!!! Hehehe, I definitely enjoyed designing a hate-bouquet for this one. :P
> 
> Thank you!!! Please, have a wonderful day~
> 
> (Also... This is my 100th story on Ao3.... 0_0 How crazy is that?!)

Nagito Komaeda was slumped behind the flower shop counter just then, bandaging his hand.  It’d been an accident with some clippers and an extremely persistent branch, this time...  All Komaeda’s regular customers knew he was unusually — almost ridiculously — accident-prone, so everybody was mostly just surprised he’d managed to keep all his fingers attached.  Even the ones on his latest prosthetic, so far!  Komaeda normally went through prosthetic arms so quickly.  Dealing with accidents took a hefty dent out of his inheritance — pretty lucky he could afford the shop at all, right?

Komaeda’s shop offered flowers and little potted trees, gardening equipment and fresh fruit from a greenhouse out back.  He’d tried keeping the whole thing afloat by himself for a few months, but after the third time all his greenhouse plants met untimely, impossible-to-predict deaths...  Hm.  Komaeda had hired a couple employees to balance out his own natural calamity, then.  Don’t worry — he gave them both plenty of warnings before signing them on, of course.  Nobody’d died yet, anyway!  … Thank goodness.

Komaeda thought it was one of those employees back from a coffee and sickly-sweet-little-cakes run, when the door swung open, actually.  The shop was technically closed for lunch, so it would’ve made sense.  Komaeda’d called out that he would lock the door all cheerfully, but...  Ah, he must have forgotten.  Maybe that was when he’d realized he was bleeding through all those old bandages?

Komaeda said, “Togami, do you know if we have any more bandages in greenhouse storage?” without even looking up, though, first thing.  He knew — or thought he knew? — that the actual Byakuya Togami couldn’t be working at any old modest flower shop.  But...  He also knew _this_ Togami was earnest and hard-working, gentle to everything in the greenhouse.  Komaeda would pay him however he asked to be paid, for now, and trust that someday...  Maybe...  He would open up and explain what was going on.

Anyway, Togami was way better at knowing where stuff was than Komaeda, generally, and he hadn’t laughed off Komaeda’s warnings about what working with him could be like.  He’d studied Komaeda’s hazy dark eyes and ran a glance over his scars and fresh bruises. He’d folded his arms over his own ample midsection and said it looked like Komaeda could use someone reliable around.  And so, someone reliable he would have.

It wasn’t Togami at the door this time, though.  It wasn’t even Komaeda’s other — currently unscheduled — employee, Mahiru Koizumi.  Komaeda jumped a little when the scowling, pointy-haired stranger slapped some money down on his counter.  For a second, he thought the shop’s ceiling was caving in again, honestly.

“How would I passive-aggressively say ‘fuck you’ in flowers?” the guy demanded.  His eyes were tired, and his voice sounded like it was marching around behind a row of serious-business shields.  Like Roman soldiers, maybe.  It felt as if Komaeda knew him from somewhere, but he couldn’t quite pin down where.

Komaeda blinked.  Thought over his stock — what was fresh and worth this furious guy’s money.  “It’ll look like a sunset,” he said after a second. “Unless, of course, you want to say ‘fuck you’ with a handful of mangled stems?  That wouldn’t necessarily be ‘passive-aggressive,’ I guess.”

It was gratifying — weirdly gratifying — when the guy barked a laugh at that.  For some reason, Komaeda found himself hoping he could string the right words together to make him laugh again.  To see what his honest smile looked like before he left the store.

Komaeda strapped the bandage he’d been working on over his thumb and eased out from behind the counter.  Geez, this guy had intense eyes, didn’t he?  He also had a snappy suit on, with a name tag by the lapel.  Hinata.  He was called “Hinata,” and apparently he was somebody at the infamous Kuzuryuu Law Firm’s personal assistant.  Hinata was maybe Komaeda’s age...  He had a sharp, determined _awake-ness_ about him Komaeda didn’t think it would be possible to fake.

“I guess, if it were me, I’d start with a few yellow carnations,” Komaeda told Hinata.  He drifted over and gathered a handful of the nicest flowers from the carnation display, checking the delicate petals for damage as he went.  Lifting them carefully with his prosthetic fingers.  “They symbolize rejection, you know?”

“I guess I know that now,” Hinata said.

“And then, maybe we’ll add a little texture.  Do you like orange lilies?”

Hinata shrugged.

“They symbolize hatred and pride.”

A smirk, then.  “Perfect,” Hinata said.  Of course Komaeda wanted to ask what had happened...  Who these “fuck you” flowers were actually for.  But something stopped him.  It was a little like how Komaeda didn’t press Togami for his origin story, so long as his paychecks could — apparently? — go through okay, and a little like how he never tried to peek at Koizumi’s photography school projects until she explicitly shared them with him.  Things tended to sway unknowingly into “disastrous” all too often in Komaeda’s life, anyway, even when he didn’t go around looking for trouble.

“And this is what I meant by a sunset —“ Komaeda continued, “ — you have all these yellows and oranges, a little striped red...  And now, petunias?  That deep purple-y night creeping in.  They represent resentment, I’ve heard.  Do you think...  I mean, is this alright, sir?  I’ll wrap some tight ribbons around the base, too.  Something strangling.”

Hinata nodded, and Komaeda fiddled with the bouquet, and when Hinata took a shaky, watery breath Komaeda wondered if it would be too forward to offer him some tissues.  In the end, he just tapped the box gently across the counter.  There if they were needed, but not the sort of thing he’d make a big show about.

A little while after that, Hinata started talking.  A dull mutter, at first, more to himself than anything...  But soon enough he was meeting Komaeda’s eyes as he tangled some black ribbon around the gathered flowers and selected a clear dark-glass vase from behind the counter.  He...  Whoa.  He probably told Komaeda everything?  Pretty much?

 _That_ didn’t generally happen.  Normally there was something about Komaeda that knocked people off-balance without him meaning it to, it seemed.  _“You remind people of a ghost,”_ Koizumi had said once.  _“I mean...  When I take pictures of you, even, they come out blurry every time.”_   And, _“It’s not your fault, just...  So you know...”—_ that was from Togami, there.  _“However people treat you.  However you were born.  It’s not your fault at all, and we, your friends, we’ll support you.”_

But Hinata seemed comfortable enough with Komaeda, just a couple minutes in.  Komaeda brought a chair over to the other side of the counter for him and got some lemonade out of the staff fridge in the back of the store.  He scrambled his way through pretty much the whole conversation, always certain he was saying the wrong thing.  Tripping over his tongue.  Chanting, _“... Shit, shit, shit...”_ in his head.

When was Hinata going to realize who exactly he was confessing so much about his ex’s upcoming engagement party to?!  When was he going to frown at Komaeda and ask why he hadn’t been offered his change back yet?

Hinata wasn’t jealous of his ex’s new life, it seemed — but he _was_ furious he’d gotten an invitation to this damn party at all, given everything that’d happened between them.  Shouldn’t he just be allowed to move on, or whatever?  Komaeda said he understood, though actually...  Actually he’d never even kissed anyone, not yet.  He bound the ribbons tighter around Hinata’s hate-bouquet, so maybe his ex would feel appropriately smothered looking at them.  They were going to drape down the sides of the vase, a little like reaching arms.

Hinata was just going to drop these flowers off in the happy couple’s gift pile, and then get the hell out of there.  Komaeda said that sounded like an excellent plan.  It wasn’t like Hinata didn’t have other things to do with his life, right?  Right.  He had work, for one thing.  Obviously, because of his name tag?  And he had to have hobbies — hobbies Komaeda resisted asking about, for now.  He _did_ learn that Hinata had a cat waiting at home, at the very least.  Her name was Chiaki, after a childhood friend who had died young.

Komaeda didn’t say this next bit, but he thought that story about the cat was sort of sweet.  Hinata’s name meant “Sunflower,” after all...  And sunflowers represented loyalty, didn’t they?  Maybe Hinata would’ve thought that was neat.  Possibly not, though.  A lot of people acted like Komaeda’s observations were weird, so he kept his mouth shut.  He realized he was smiling after a minute, and that he probably shouldn’t grin after hearing about this handsome customer’s dead friend.  Komaeda bit down the edges of his smile, forcefully.

It sounded like Hinata agreed with Komaeda’s points, though, anyway.  Appreciated the pep-talk, somewhat.  He said yeah, yeah, and he had stuff to do after the engagement party, too!  It wasn’t like he could stand around all day pretending to like everybody’s clothes.  There were some friends he was supposed to meet for dinner.  To catch up, after a long time.  And hey, he could even swing back here on the way!  Tell Komaeda how it went, or something.

Hinata asked how late the shop would be open, and Komaeda was so, _so_ tempted to say, “However late you need.”  He didn’t, though.  He said six-thirty, because that was true.  It was on the sign by the door, after all.  Just under the note announcing that the shop was closed for lunch.

Hinata thought that through and said he’d be back soon.  He slammed his hand down on the table as he said it, too — maybe dramatic exclamations were sort of a thing with him?

When he got back from his coffee run, Togami set an unflavored latte next to Komaeda’s hand — a silent gift, even though Togami couldn’t understand why Komaeda didn’t like sweet things — and asked why his face was folded down into his arms like that.  Why his shoulders were shaking with such ominous laughter.  Did he have to emergency-rescue any of the plants, again?  Did Komaeda need a ride to the hospital, or something?

When Komaeda told him what had _actually_ happened, Togami double-checked that the door was really, truly locked this time.  Then, he flopped down in Hinata’s abandoned chair and they talked through how they’d play it cool...  Or, as cool as they could, likely as not...  When Hinata came by again.


End file.
